Oh, yeah, I enjoyed it. My wife liked it, too, and she's not really into barbecue, so I consider that a win. Honestly, it's nothing too special. You could just smoke some ground pork and get the same basic idea. It was definitely better than a McRib, at least to me. I think I've mentioned here before that every couple of years I would be enticed by the McRib, only to be sorely disappointed. This was a very reasonable approximation of what I expected a McRib to be.

If anyone is interested in the recipe, there isn't much to it. I approached it as a sausage (as the texture of a McRib is very sausage-like as opposed to hamburger-like.) Just get your rib meat, get it cold (along with your grinder attachments), grind it, add about 2% by weight of salt (I had 800g of pork, so 16g of salt by my scale). I grated a little bit of black pepper in there, too, along with some brown sugar (probably about 8g worth.) Also, about 1/2 cup of water or so. Knead until everything comes together and the mixture becomes tacky. Put in fridge. I didn't sex it up more than that, as the McDonald's ingredient list just says pork, salt, water, dextrose, and some preservative stuff. I felt like I was somewhat cheating with the pepper.

The rest was just smoke it on the WSM, and it was done in about an hour. I glazed it with Open Pit original about 1/2 way through cooking, and flipped the suckers. Why Open Pit (original)? Because a) I was too lazy to make my own sauce and b) it is one of the rare commercial sauces that doesn't contain liquid smoke. If I'm going to go through the trouble of sawing wood to smoke the damn thing, I'm not going to drown it in liquid smoke.

Buns were Aunt Millie's deli rolls (I was just looking for something that looked as close as possible to the McRib roll), and I toasted them in the oven. I dare say, I may have preferred them warm but untoasted. The crackliness detracted from the whole "McRib" experience I was somewhat (but not completely) trying to recreate. Pickles were just Centrella dills, and onions were Spanish yellow onions.

Last edited by Binko on November 15th, 2013, 11:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.

It's not. From my understanding, it's mostly shoulder (and other pig parts). But part of the fun here is that is what I was getting at with this post. I was really curious at what a "McRib" would taste like if it were actually made from rib meat.

Binko wrote:Why Open Pit (original)? Because a) I was too lazy to make my own sauce and b) it is one of the rare commercial sauces that doesn't contain liquid smoke. If I'm going to go through the trouble of sawing wood to smoke the damn thing, I'm not going to drown it in liquid smoke.

I'm a fan of Open Pit Original as well, its the BBQ sauce I grew up with. Not as sweet as most and, in addition to not containing liquid smoke, lends itself to quick/simple enhancements. (shake of Co-Op Hot Sauce, squirt of mustard, glug of pickle juice, mince of jalapeno, fresh grated onion etc)

I did have an unsettling feeling that I was committing a mortal sin by first deboning and then grinding up a perfectly good slab of spares. But I have to say, they do make for nice sausage meat. I rolled up some of the leftover meat cevapcici style and smoked it along with the patties (though I kept them out of the photos) and those were quite nice, too, as simple smoked pork sausages.